Context, class, and community: a methodological framework for studying labor organizing and digital unionizing

ABSTRACT

A key debate in an increasingly digital environment is the tension between individuals and institutions with online engagement. An area that exemplifies this opposition is the study of digital unionizing. Labor studies scholarship tends to focus on institutions while communication research often privileges the individual. This article extends these two approaches by outlining three key considerations in what shapes online collective action within working-class and worker struggles: context, class and community. I also conceptualize this methodological framework to study digital unionizing and labor organizing more broadly, which I refer to as the 3C Method. The empirical foundation for this methodological argument derives from existing literature, as well as select findings from a three-year digital organizing research project.

KEYWORDS:

• Labor unions
• digital activism
• public-sector
• social media
• internet

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jen Schradie

Jen Schradie is a digital sociologist at the Observatoire sociologique du changement at Sciences Po in Paris. A graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, she received her Phd in sociology and new media at the University of California, Berkeley. Her peer-reviewed work on digital democracy has been featured on CNN and the BBC and in the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, Vox, and WIRED Magazine, among other media. She was awarded the Public Sociology Alumni Prize at the University of California, Berkeley, and has directed six documentary films. Her book, The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives (Harvard University Press) has won both ASA and ICA awards.[email: [email protected]]